FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL - PAGE 2

On March 10, 1785, Thomas Jefferson was named as minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin. In 1862 the U.S. government issued its first paper money. In 1876 the first clear telephone call was made when Alexander Graham Bell summoned his assistant from another room of Bell's home in Boston. In 1946 women voted for the first time in local elections in Italy. In 1949 Mildred Gillars, known as "Axis Sally" in World War II, was convicted of treason in a U.S. court for her wartime broadcasts for the Nazis.

On March 10, 1629, England's King Charles I dissolved Parliament. He would not call it back for 11 years. In 1862 the U.S. government issued its first paper money. In 1876 the first clear telephone call was made by Alexander Graham Bell, who summoned his assistant from another room of Bell's Boston home with the request: "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." In 1946 women in Italy voted for the first time in local elections. In 1965 Neil Simon's comedy, "The Odd Couple," starring Walter Matthau and Art Carney, opened on Broadway.

Tracking down facts: Doing research is so exciting, said Wheaton author and Underground Railroad expert Glennette Tilley Turner, because such fascinating gems of information always turn up. For instance, while fact finding for her book on Lewis H. Latimer, who developed a telephone design for Alexander Graham Bell and patented a long-lasting light bulb, among other things, she found information about Richard T. Greener. Greener evidently was a well-known African-American intellectual in the late 1880s, Turner said, yet she had never heard of him. He served as U.S. consul to Vladivostok in Russia, was chairman of the Department of Metaphysics and Logic at University of South Carolina and was secretary of the association that raised funds for President Ulysses S. Grant's tomb.

In a unique interplay of entertainment and history, the students of Nathan Hale Elementary School in Schaumburg were treated to a professional theater troupe last week depicting the life and times of Alexander Graham Bell. Bell, the Scottish-American who invented the telephone in 1876, flew off the pages of the stolid history books and came to life for the youngsters when actor Mark Grimsich danced the telegraph tap and sang songs about his invention. It's not just entertainment," said school principal Craig Gaska, adding, "This production is something the students will remember, talk over at the dinner table and remember for a long time to come.

On Feb. 14, in about the year 269, St. Valentine was beheaded in Rome during the persecution of Claudius the Goth. In 1803 Moses Coats of Downingtown, Pa., invented the apple parer. In 1859 Oregon was admitted to the Union as the 33rd state. In 1876 inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray applied separately for patents relating to the telephone. (The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled Bell was the rightful inventor.) In 1894 Benjamin Kubelsky, who became famous as comic Jack Benny, was born in Waukegan.

The invention of the telephone proved again that timing is everything and provided a fortune not only for the inventor but for untold numbers of lawyers as well. A principal player in this drama was a resident of Lake County. On Feb. 14, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell filed an application with the U.S. Patent Office for the telephone. That same day in the Patent Office, Elisha Gray of Highland Park filed a "notice of intention" that he was going to claim a patent on a similar device, according to historical accounts.

A combination of individual genius and an intellectual atmosphere that fostered innovation is what Harold Evans celebrates in "They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine" (Little, Brown, 496 pages, $40). As Evans, an English science reporter turned American publishing executive, puts it, the harsh conditions and unfamiliar environment facing early American settlers "impelled an almost frantic drive . . . for practical innovations that would make life less tenuous and more agreeable," and were invariably combined with forward-looking marketing strategies.

Despite widespread belief that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, people who look deeply into the matter keep concluding that he didn't. Indeed, the first working telephone was built by Johann Philipp Reis in Germany in 1863, but Reis didn't seek to patent his invention or commercialize it. In the U.S., Elisha Gray of Highland Park had the clearest claim to inventing the telephone. He and Bell both filed papers with the U.S. Patent Office on the same day in 1876, but Bell and his lawyers argued that his claim was filed first.

Ma Bell returned unto dust Wednesday morning in a shower of glitter, her name reduced to flecks of golden paint flying off the blade of a putty knife. The putty knife was wielded by Lake County Board Chairman Robert Depke who, in a twist on the tradition in which a politician turns the first shovel of dirt on a new enterprise, was ending an era by ceremonially scraping the Illinois Bell logo off the glass doors of the company's Waukegan headquarters. "My wife is going to want to know where I've been," he said, pausing to try to brush the spangles off his suit coat.